Smith v. United States ex rel. Grisius

58 F.2d 1, 1932 U.S. App. LEXIS 4616
Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit·Decided March 18, 1932·No. No. 4629·Published·Cited by 1 cases

Opinion

EVANS, Circuit Judge.

Magdute Giraityte Grisius, a native of Lithuania, unlawfully entered the United States from Canada, August 16, 1929, without inspection and not possessed of an unexpired immigration visa. A warrant for her deportation was issued August 23, 1930, upon hearing had. She married appellee, an American citizen, on February 29,1931. Appellee sought and secured from the District Court a writ of habeas corpus for the freedom of his wife on the ground that she was unlawfully held for deportation. The Director of Immigration appealed. The writ of habeas corpus can be sustained, if at all, on but one ground — the alien’s marriage to an American citizen.

Appellee contends that the alien wife of an American citizen is not deportable under the Act of 1917 unless she be a member of the immoral class, which is eoneededly not a fact in the case before ns. He further contends that the act of 1922 did not enlarge the class of deportable aliens, being an act concerning naturalization and not immigration, a contention which we accept for the purpose of this ease. Appellee’s contention is based upon the Act of 1917, the relevant section of which is set forth in the margin.1 It provided that a woman of the immoral class might be deported although she married a citizen after her [2] arrest, or after the commission of acts making hear otherwise liable for deportation. Such specific provision designating certain aliens, although they are married, as nevertheless liable to-deportation, it is argued, evidenced a congressional intent to limit the deportable wives of Americans to the class therein defined. Expressio unius est exclusio alterius. This contention we might accept were it not for the changes in the citizen status of married women resulting from the passage of the so-called Cable Act of 1922 (8 US CA § 368).2 Prior to the passage of the Cable Act in 1922, and when the 1917 Act was in full force, the citizen status of the wife became that of her husband upon marriage. As sueh she was not deportable although grounds existed for her deportation prior to her marriage to the American citizen. It was.in reference to this state of law that thei aforesaid section of the Act of 1917 was addressed. The right of the wife of an American citizen was not traceable to the Act of 1917, but arose out of her status as an American citizen due to her marriage to fi husband who was a citizen of the United States. It is worthy of note that the denial of her right to remain in the United States was due to that clause of the above-quoted section which denied her citizenship notwithstanding she married a citizen.

Appellee relies chiefly upon the case of Dorto v. Clark (D. C.) 300 F. 568; Id., 5 F. (2d) 596, 597 (C. C. A. 1). The immigrant there was an Italian woman who was ordered deported because the Italian quota, when she entered, was exhausted. She instituted habeas corpus proceedings which were dismissed. She appealed, and, pending the appeal when she was out on bail, she contracted a common-law marriage with Dorto, and went through a ceremonial marriage one day after the 1922 Act went into effect. She again sought a writ of habeas corpus for her release. The Circuit Court of Appeals sus-tained the writ, assigning as its sole ground “that the petitioner became an American citizen by virtue of a valid marriage to an American citizen before the Cable Act took effect,” and recognizing that the common-law marriage of an alien wife to a citizen conferred citizenship upon the wife. The District Court took the position that the woman’s marriage upon September 23,1922’(one day after the 1922 Act went into effeet) did not make her an American citizen, but did make her the lawful wife of an American citizen, and that she could not be deported under the act of 1917, nor under the Act of 1922, which did not enlarge the 1917 Act’s provisions as to deportation. The Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision is therefore no authority for appellee. But the District Court’s decision is in point.

The District Court in Dorto v. Clark, 300 F. 568, cited in support of its opinion the ease of United States v. Tod, 285 F. 523, 26 A. L. R. 1316, decided by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The latter court, in United States ex rel. Paolantonio v. Day, Commissioner of Immigration, 22 F. (2d) 914, 916 (1927), however rejected this position. It said: “In Dorto v. Clark * * * the construction contended for by appellant seems to have been adopted; but, with deference to the learned District Judge who decided it, we are, for reasons already stated, unwilling to follow it. * * * (It) was affirmed * * * but upon other grounds; so that it gained no added authority from affirmance.”

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Smith v. United States ex rel. Grisius, 58 F.2d 1, 1932 U.S. App. LEXIS 4616 (7th Cir. 1932).

58 F.2d 1 (Smith v. United States ex rel. Grisius) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related